of which it is written. "He set his face stedfastly" to go toward
the cross--He spoke to His disciples of His death. He had been with
them now three years, but had not been able fully to reveal His
mission, because they were "not strong enough to bear it." A man
with friends, yet friendless, lonely in the possession of His great
secret, He had longed to give them His full confidence, but dared
not. Now, as they journeyed southward through Cæsarea Philippi,
He asked them, "Who do men say that I am?" And they answered,
"Some say John the Baptist; others, Elias; others, Jeremias, or
one of the prophets." And he saith, "But who say ye that I am?"
Then Peter--brave, impulsive, glorious Peter--witness his good
confession: "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God!" The
hour had come. His disciples were beginning to know Him. He would
give them His full confidence. So as they journeyed on toward
Jerusalem He told them all how He had come to redeem the world by
bearing its penalty of death; "He began to show them how he must
suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and
be killed." At that point Peter could hold his peace no longer, but
began to rebuke him, saying, "Be it far from thee, Lord! To suffer?
To die? Nay, to reign in Messianic splendor!" And Jesus turning,
said unto him, "Get thee behind me, Satan!"--the very words with
which He had repelled the same suggestion in the wilderness. As He
looked on His disciple, He saw not Peter, but Satan--perceived
how the adversary had for the moment taken possession, as it were,
of this man's brain and conscience and lips. "Get thee behind me,
Satan! I know thee! I recognize thy crafty suggestion; but I am not
to be turned aside from my purpose. Get thee behind me! Thou art an
offense unto me. Thy words are not of divine wisdom, but of human
policy. Thou savorest not the things that be of God, but those that
be of men!"
From this we conclude that the vicarious death of Jesus is the
vital center of His gospel, and that any word which contravenes it
is in the nature of a Satanic suggestion. It follows that no man
can truly believe in Christ without assenting to the fact that the
saving power is in His death; as it is written, "The blood of Jesus
Christ cleanseth from all sin," and, "Without the shedding of blood
there is no remission." He came into the world to die for sinners,
that they by His death might enter into life; He came to take our
place before the bar of the offended law, to be "wounded for our
transgressions and bruised for our iniquities, that by his stripes
we might be healed"; He came to "bear our sins in his own body on
the tree"; and to believe in Christ is to believe that He did what
He came to do.
It means, fourth--and now we come to the very heart of the
matter--to believe that Christ means precisely what He says. He
says to the sinner, "The Son of man hath power on earth to forgive
sins." He says, "Him that cometh unto me, I will in no wise cast
out." He says, "He that believeth in me hath everlasting life."
At this point belief means personal appropriation; acceptance,
immediate, here, now. It is to make an end of doubt and perplexity
and all questionings, by closing in with the overtures of divine
mercy. It is to lay down one's arms and make an unconditional
surrender. It is to take the proffered hand of the Savior in an
everlasting covenant of peace. It is to say, "My Lord, my life, my
sacrifice, my Savior and my all!"
But just here is where many hesitate and fail. They do not "screw
their courage to the sticking point." They come up to the line, but
do not take the step that crosses it. They put away the outstretched
hand, and so fall short of salvation.
The will must act. The prodigal in the far country will stay there
forever unless his resolution cries, "I will arise and go!" The
resolution is an appropriating act. It makes Christ mine; it links
my soul with His, as the coupler binds the locomotive to the loaded
train. It grasps His outstretched hand; it seals the compact and
inspires the song:
'Tis done, the great transaction's done,
I am my Lord's and He is mine!
He drew me, and I followed on,
Charmed to confess the voice divine.
High heaven that hears the solemn vow,
That vow renewed shall daily hear;
Till in life's latest hour I bow
And bless in death a bond so dear!
Now this is all. The man who really believes on Christ is saved by
that alone. He can never be lost. As Wesley sang, "Christ and I are
so joined, He can't go to heaven and leave me behind." But salvation
from the penalty of sin is not the whole of salvation; only the
beginning of it.
The sequel to "becoming a Christian" is following Christ.
"Salvation" is a large word, including growth in character and
usefulness and all the high attainments which are included in a
genuine Christian life. This is what Paul means when he says, "Work
out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God
that worketh in you." Work it out! Work your salvation out to its
uttermost possibilities! Be a maximum Christian; not content with
being saved "so as by fire," but craving "an abundant entrance" into
the kingdom. All this is accomplished in the close and faithful
following of Christ.
This "following" is the sure test and touchstone by which a man
determines whether he has really come to Christ and believes in
Him. Our "good works" are not meritorious as having any part in
our deliverance from condemnation; but they are the acid test of
our faith; and they also determine the quality of the heaven that
awaits us. And, in this sense, "they shall in no wise lose their
reward." To use a rude figure; a man going to an entertainment gets
a ticket of admission, but for his reserved seat he pays something
more. "The just shall live by faith;" but the abundance of their
life is determined by the product of their faith. Wherefore, he
loses much who, while believing in Christ, follows Him afar off.
To follow Christ at the best, means to regard Him as our Priest,
our only Priest, whose sacrifice is full and sufficient for us. We
forsake all other plans of salvation and trust simply and solely to
the merit of His atoning blood.
To follow Christ means to regard Him as our only Prophet or Teacher.
All preachers, ecclesiastical councils, historic creeds and symbols
are remanded to a subordinate place. His word is ultimate for us.
To follow Christ means to regard Him as our King. He reigns in
us and over us. His love constrains us. His wish is our law. His
authority is final. "Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it."
And to follow Christ means to do all this in the open. It may be
that some who refuse to confess Christ are ultimately saved by Him;
but the presumption is immensely against the man who lives that way.
"Stand forth into the midst!" "Quit thyself like a man!"
In closing, we return to iterate and reiterate the proposition that
our salvation from sin and spiritual death is by faith in Christ and
by that only. Let no side issues enter here to confuse and bewilder
us. "He that believeth shall be saved."
That is final and conclusive. Our deliverance is wholly of grace: we
do not earn it. "The wages of sin is death: but the gift of God is
eternal life."
Long as I live, I'll still be crying
Mercy's free!
And therefore all the glory is unto God: "Of whom are we in
Christ Jesus, who is made unto us wisdom and righteousness and
sanctification and redemption; that, according as it is written, if
any man glory, let him glory in the Lord."
Nevertheless, the benefit of the gift is conditioned on our
acceptance of it. The manna lies about our feet "white and plenteous
as hoar frost," but it will not save us from famishing unless we
gather it up and eat it. The water gushes from the rock, but we
shall die of thirst unless we dip it up and drink it. Christ on the
cross saves no man; it is only when Christ is appropriated that He
saves us. We must make Him ours. We must grasp His extended hand.
Luther said, "The important thing is the possessive pronoun, first
person singular." One of the fathers said, "It is the grip on the
Blood that saves us." Christ stands waiting--he offers life for the
taking. Who will have it? The worst of sinners can make it his very
own by saying with all his heart, "I will! I do!"
WATSON
OPTIMISM
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
JOHN WATSON, widely known under his pen name of "Ian Maclaren,"
was born at Manningtree, Essex, England, in 1850. For many years
he was pastor of Free St. Matthew's Church, Glasgow. He died at
Mt. Pleasant, Iowa, in 1907. He enjoyed unusual popularity, both
as a preacher and as a lecturer. In 1896 he gave a course of
lectures to the students of Yale. "The Bonnie Brier Bush" is his
best-known book. Another volume of his, "The Cure of Souls," is full
of splendid practical suggestions for the minister and divinity
student. Here is a sample of his satire directed toward certain
speakers: "It is said that there are ingenious books which contain
extracts--very familiar as a rule--on every religious subject, so
that the minister, having finished his sermon on faith or hope,
has only to take down this pepper-caster and flavor his somewhat
bare sentences with literature. If this ignominious tale be founded
on fact, and be not a scandal of the enemy, then the Protestant
Church ought also to have an 'Index Expurgatorius,' and its central
authorities insert therein books which it is inexpedient for
ministers to possess. In this class should be included 'The Garland
of Quotations' and 'The Reservoir of Illustrations.'"
WATSON
1850-1907
OPTIMISM[6]
[6] Reprinted by permission of the publishers, A. C. Armstrong & Son.
_Go ye therefore and teach all nations._--Matthew xxviii., 19.
Among the characteristics of Jesus' teaching which have passed into
the higher consciousness of Christianity is an inextinguishable
optimism. When He was only a village prophet, Jesus declared that
the social Utopia of Isaiah was already being fulfilled; when
He gave the Sermon on the Mount He spoke as a greater Moses,
legislating not for a nation but for a race. If He called apostles,
they were to disciple every creature, and if He died it was for a
world. His generation might condemn Him, but they would see Him
again on the clouds of heaven. His death would be celebrated in a
sacrament unto every generation, and being lifted on a cross He
would draw all men to Him. The apostles who failed in His lifetime
would afterward do greater works than Himself, and He who departed
from their sight would return in the Holy Ghost and be with them
forever. He looks beyond His own land, and embraces a race in His
plans. He ignores the defeats of His own ministry, and discounts the
victory of His disciples. He teaches, commands, arranges, prophesies
with a universal and eternal accent. This was not because he made
light of His task or of His enemies; no one ever had such a sense
of the hideous tyranny of sin or passed through such a Gehenna, but
Jesus believed with all His heart and mind in the kingdom of God,
that it was coming and must come. He held that the age of gold was
not behind, but before humanity.
The high spirit has passed into the souls of Christ's chief
servants. The directors and pioneers, the martyrs and exemplars of
our faith have had no misgivings; the light of hope has ever been
shining on their faces. St. Paul boasted that he was a free-born
Roman, but he was prouder to be a member of Christ's commonwealth,
whose capital was in heaven and in which all nations were one. He
was loyal subject of Cæsar, but he owned a more magnificent emperor
at God's right hand. Above the forces of this present world he saw
the principalities and powers in the heavenly places fighting for
his faith. Scourged and imprisoned he burst into psalms, and he
looked beyond his martyrdom to the crown of righteousness. Shackled
to a soldier he wrote letters brimming over with joy, and confined
to a barrack room he caught through a narrow window the gleam of
the eternal city. Never did he flinch before a hostile world, never
was he browbeaten by numbers, never was he discouraged by failure
or reverse. He knew that he was on the winning side, and that he
was laying the foundation of an everlasting state. You catch the
same grand note in St. Augustine with all his horror of prevailing
iniquity; in the medieval hymn writers celebrating Jerusalem the
Golden, when clouds of judgment hung over their heads; and in the
missionaries of the faith who toiled their life through without a
convert, and yet died in faith. They might be losing, but their
commander was winning. The cross might be surrounded with the smoke
of battle, it was being carried forward to victory.
They were right in this conviction, but do not let us make any
mistake about the nature of this triumph, else we shall be
caught by delusions, and in the end be discouraged. It will not
be ecclesiastical, and by that one means that no single church,
either the Church of Rome, or the Church of England, or the Church
of Scotland will ever embrace the whole human race, or even its
English-speaking province. One can not study church history since
the Reformation, or examine the condition of the various religious
denominations to-day without being convinced that there will
always be diversity of organization, and any person who imagines
the Church of the East making her humble submission to Rome, or
the various Protestant bodies of the Anglo-Saxon race trooping in
their multitude to surrender their orders to the Anglican Church
has really lost touch with the possibilities of life. Nor will the
triumph be theological in the sense that all men will come to hold
the same dogma whether it be that of Rome or Geneva. There will
always be many schools of thought within the kingdom of God just
as there will be many nations. Neither one Church nor one creed
will swallow up the others and dominate the world. He who cherishes
that idea is the victim of an optimism which is unreasonable and
undesirable. The kingdom of God will come not through organization
but through inspiration. Its sign will not be the domination of a
Church, but the regeneration of humanity. When man shall be brother
to man the world over, and war shall no longer drench cornfields
with blood: when women are everywhere honored, and children are
protected: when cities are full of health and holiness, and when the
burden of misery has been lifted from the poor, then the world shall
know Christ has not died in vain, and His vision shall be fulfilled.
A fond imagination which only tantalizes and disheartens! It is
natural to say so, but magnificent dreams have come true. Suppose
you had been on the sorrowful way when Jesus was being led to His
doom, and women were pitying this innocent prophet whose hopes had
been so rudely dashed, and whose life had been so piteously wasted.
"Ah!" they cry, "His illusions have been scattered, and His brief
day is going down in darkness." It appeared so, but was it so?
Suppose while the kind-hearted people were talking, some one had
prophesied the career of Jesus. They would have laughed and called
him a visionary, yet which would have been right, the people who
judged by Jesus' figure beneath the cross, or the man who judged
Jesus' power through that cross? The people who looked at the mob of
Jerusalem, or the man who saw the coming generations? There are two
ideas of Christ's crucifixion in art, and each has its own place.
There is the realistic scene with the cross raised only a few feet
from the ground, a Jewish peasant hanging on it, a Roman guard
keeping order, and a rabble of fanatical priests as spectators. That
is a fact, if you please, down to the color of the people's garments
and the shape of the Roman spears. Very likely that is how it looked
and happened. There is also the idealistic scene with a cross high
and majestic on which Christ is hanging with His face hidden. Behind
there is an Italian landscape with a river running through a valley,
trees against the sky, and the campanile of a village church. At
the foot of the cross kneels St. Mary Magdalene, on the right at a
little distance are the Blest Virgin and St. Francis, on the left
St. John and St. Jerome. The Roman soldiers and the Jewish crowd and
that poor cross of Roman making have disappeared as a shadow. The
great cross of the divine Passion is planted in the heart of the
Church and of the race forever. Facts? Certainly, but which is the
fact, that or this? Which is nearer to the truth, the Christ of the
sorrowful way or the Christ at God's right hand?
Have there been no grounds for optimism? Has the splendid hope of
Christ been falsified? One may complain that the centuries have
gone slowly, and that the chariot of righteousness has dragged
upon the road. But Christ has been coming and conquering. There is
some difference between the statistics of the Upper Room, and the
Christian Church to-day; between slavery in the Roman Empire and
to-day; between the experience of women in the pre-Christian period
and to-day; between the reward of labor in Elizabeth's England and
to-day; between the use of riches in the eighteenth century, and the
beginning of the twentieth; between pity for animals in the Georgian
period and to-day. If we are not uplifted by this beneficent
progress, it is because we have grown accustomed to the reign of
Christianity, and are impatient for greater things. We are apt to
be pessimists, not because the kingdom of God is halting, but
because it has not raced; not because the gospel has failed to build
up native churches in the ends of the earth with their own forms,
literature, martyrs, but because all men have not yet believed the
joyful sound.
There are two grounds for the unbounded optimism of our faith, and
the first is God. How did such ideas come into the human mind? Where
did the imagination of the prophets and apostles catch fire? Where
is the spring of the prayers and aspirations of the saints? Whence
do all light and all love come? Surely from God. Can we imagine
better than God can do? Can we demand a fairer world than God will
make? Were not the Greek philosophers right in thinking that our
ideals are eternal, and are kept with God? It is not a question of
our imagining too much, but too little, of being too soon satisfied.
So soon made happy? Hadst thou learned
What God accounteth happiness
Thou wouldst not find it hard to guess
What hell may be his punishment
For those who doubt if God invent
Better than they.
The other ground for optimism is Jesus Christ. Does it seem that the
perfect life for the individual, and for the race, is too sublime,
that it is a distant and unattainable ideal? It is well enough to
give the Sermon on the Mount, and true enough that if it were lived
the world would be like heaven, but then has it ever been lived?
Yes, once at least, and beyond all question. Christ lived as He
taught. He bade men lose their lives and He lost His; He bade men
trample the world underfoot and He trampled it; He commanded men to
love, and He loved even unto death. This He did as the forerunner
of the race. Why not again with Christ as Captain? Why not always,
why not everywhere? Is not He the standard of humanity now, and is
not He its Redeemer? Has He not been working in the saints who have
reminded the world of God? Will He not continue to work till all men
come to the stature of perfection?
Only one institution in human society carries the dew of its
youth, and through the conflict of the centuries still chants
its morning song. It is the religion of Jesus. I do not mean the
Christianity which exhausts its energy in the criticism of documents
or the discussion of ritual--the Christianity of scholasticism or
ecclesiasticism, for there is no life in that pedantry. I do not
mean the Christianity which busies itself with questions of labor
and capital, meat and drink, votes and politics, for there is no
lift in that machinery. I mean the Christianity which centers in the
person of the Son of God, with His revelation of the Father, and His
gospel of salvation, with His hope of immortality and His victory
of soul. This Christianity endures while civilizations exhaust
themselves and pass away, and the face of the world changes. Its
hymns, its prayers, its heroism, its virtues, are ever fresh and
radiant. If a man desires to be young in his soul let him receive
the spirit of Jesus, and bathe his soul in the Christian hope. Ah,
pessimism is a heartless, helpless spirit. If one despairs of the
future for himself and for his fellows, then he had better die at
once. It is despair which cuts the sinews of a man's strength and
leaves him at the mercy of temptation. Do you say, What can I do,
because the light round me is like unto darkness? Climb the mast
till you are above the fog which lies on the surface of the water,
and you will see the sun shining on the spiritual world, and near
at hand the harbor of sweet content. True, we must descend again to
the travail of life, but we return assured that the sun is above the
mist. Do you say, What is the use of fighting, for where I stand
we have barely held our own? Courage! It was all you were expected
to do, and while you stood fast the center has been won, and the
issue of the battle has been decided. It was a poet who had his own
experience of adversity, and was cut down in the midst of his days,
who bade his comrades be of good cheer.
Say not, the struggle naught availeth,
The labor and the wounds are vain,
The enemy faints not nor faileth,
And as things have been they remain.
If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars.
It may be in yon smoke concealed,
Your comrades chase e'en now the fliers,
And, but for you, possess the field.
For while the tired waves, vainly breaking,
Seem here no painful inch to gain,
Far back, through creeks and inlets making,
Comes silent, flooding in, the main.
And not by eastern windows only,
When daylight comes, comes in the light,
In front, the sun climbs slow, how slowly,
But westward look, the land is bright.
NICOLL
GETHSEMANE, THE ROSE GARDEN OF GOD
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
William Robertson Nicoll, Presbyterian minister and author, was born
at Lumsden, Aberdeenshire, 1851. He was educated at the University
of Aberdeen, where he took his degree in 1870. He was Free Minister
of Dufftown, 1874-1877; of Kelso, 1877-1885. In 1886 he became
editor of _British Weekly_, _Bookman_, _Expositor_ and _Woman at
Home_, and is a prolific writer of books, mostly theological.
NICOLL
Born in 1851
GETHSEMANE, THE ROSE GARDEN OF GOD[7]
[7] Copyright, 1901, by _The Homiletic Review,_ New York.
_Without shedding of blood is no_--Heb. ix., 22.
I had a strange feeling, dear brethren, this morning, in busy
London, on a week-day, in the sunshine, reading these words from the
Epistle to the Hebrews; and it struck me that some few would think
they were strangely antique, that they contrasted violently with
your morning newspapers. And then it passed through my mind again
that there could not be anything so vitally modern, so close and
quick to the moment in London as just my text--"Without shedding
of blood there is no"--no anything; nothing; no mighty result, no
achievement, no triumph, no high thing accomplished without shedding
of blood. That is just on the lowest plane what we are getting to
know as a nation, and if we are taught it as Christians, then we
shall come to know at last what Christianity means.
Dear brethren, life is just our chance of making this great and
strange discovery, that without shedding of blood there is nothing,
nothing at all. How do young people begin, most of them? They begin
by doing little or nothing; they begin by trifling. And then they
begin to find that they are not making progress. And if so, they are
wise, gradually they put more strength into it; and then more, till
at last they have put all their strength into it. And then they say
they have not succeeded, have not gained their point. And they say,
What have we got to do now? You take off your coat to your work. A
man may disrobe; what more can be done? What more have I got left?
Left? You have got your blood left, and until you begin to part
with that you will never do any great work at all. I mean by that,
if you leave a mark in life; to fulfil a mission in life there is
wanted something more than the concentration of life. I appeal to
you, there is wanted, besides, the pruning of life, aye, and even
the maiming of life. There must be for success, even in the business
world, I say, in the world of commercial achievement, there must be
more and more an actual parting with the life before it is reached.
And we are being sternly taught this lesson as a nation. But I want
to teach it this morning to the Church as Christians.